Taking the Plunge: Tailwind for Pinterest Trial
Taking the Plunge: Tailwind for Pinterest Trial
Blog-vember 2018
I have been seeing blog posts for the Tailwind, the social media posting tool, for years now. I keep hearing about how it is supposed to help folks like us—blogs, music publishers, record label—share on social media more efficiently, more effectively, and to help us build a community quicker. But I was skeptical…
1. Dwelling on Past Mistakes
You see, we were a new blog then, and we had jumped into the Amazon Affiliates game early on only to realize that we did not have enough traffic to get enough clicks through to Amazon, so our affiliate status was revoked after 90 days of low activity. Having our Amazon affiliate status de-activated was a wake-up call for me. –It taught me that perhaps I should learn a little more about the basics of blogging before I go and partnership with others. But all the blog posts I was reading at the time said start sooner rather than later with Amazon and other affiliate programs, so I was trying to jump in whole-heartedly…. Needless to say, I became quite cautious once the Amazon-thing happened, plus once we joined Share-A-Sale, I realized that you only have a short window of time to refer business to their merchants before the links become inactive….. –Again, we were new and since I couldn’t guarantee link clicks through the largest “store” in the world—Amazon—I was sure not going to try to steer folks to some one-time sale-type of situation.
–You see where I’m going, right?
*There are affiliate links in this post. If you make a purchase through this link, you will not be charged any extra, but you will be helping to support this blog.
2. Not There Yet
The bottom line is that as I read of the wonders of Tailwind as a tool, as a new blogger, I was sooooo inundated with materials that affiliate marketing and social media sharing started to sound like these magical words that held no meaning for the newest blogging kids on the block, who were simply trying to post regularly on a blog and share on social media. –And, truly, we weren’t even on but one social media channel at the time—Facebook—I didn’t even really see the need to have a whole app to handle posting on one medium.
3. Two Years Later
It’s been nearly 2 years since then and not only have we grown our “empire” to include the original blog, but also YouTube and a podcast. We have also added in Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, SoundCloud, and, voila! Pinterest to our weekly social media posting schedule. Now, I create nearly 9 graphics for each blog post, so that I can accommodate each social media platform—you know, like, long and skinny ones for Pinterest, but square ones from Instagram and rectangular ones for Facebook—You get it, right? —Whew! All of this graphics-making has made me realize that if I am going to post to social media this much, I need some help simply posting all this stuff.
4. The Right Tool for the Job?
While a social media posting app can’t make those 9 (or more!) graphics for me, they can help me stay on-top of posting to Pinterest and Twitter, I think, by analyzing our blog website and finding out when more people who are our followers access our materials most. Thus, it has created 4 or 5 time slots that it suggests a day for maximum exposure. –I don’t know if you know this or not, but we’re knee-deep in “Blog-vember 2018” (where I am challenging us to post 3 posts a day for 30 days). It is the idea that, in order to maximize our exposure—which is one of the goals of this blogging challenge—I should, ideally, be creating 27 graphics and posting on each platform each day! Now, that’s quite a lot to wrap my head around, which is why I finally looked around and asked myself WTF can I do to make this just a tad easier? That’s when it hit me that I’d never investigated Tailwind—like I’d said I would—and that perhaps it was time to let its little light shine into our lives.
5. “This is only a test…”
There are quite a few social media posting apps—Hootsuite and Buffer—but since sooooo many bloggers rave about Tailwind and talk about how it has done so much to help them grow their blogs (and other side businesses), so I figured I would start there.
Another reason I chose Tailwind is that I have been doing experiments with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, and have found that between all the places that I post regularly, Pinterest has the been the number one place that has driven traffic to our blog; while Facebook has been the number driver of traffic to SoundCloud for us. Because our blog is the main focus of the Prejippie universe, I thought if I could spend just a little more time getting people to the blog—without significantly increasing the number of postings—then I could move on to expanding our reach in other ways (like partnerships, product creation, and by doing more networking).
6. Crossroads…
I feel like we’re at a crossroads and that I need to turn my attention slightly to other things, but at the same time, I don’t want our reach to sag because of it. While other folks may have higher numbers, the fact that we’ve gone from only have 700 personal friends on Facebook and have grown to reaching over 10,000 people a day on all our various social media outlets is a fact that we are proud of. I know for a fact that we have earned every single one of those people over, because they care about what we have to say. I don’t want to lose that while I am away tending to other aspects of the business, so I am going to try to leverage Tailwind to help out with that.
7. Taking the Plunge
The reason that I say that I will give it a TRY is because it does cost to maintain this app. I think it’s something like $15 a month (if you pay month-by-month), but about $10 a month (if you purchase a year at a time). You do, however, get one month free, so within that month, I am going to try a few experiments to see if our reach expands dramatically.
I also want to see how many cool similar blogs we meet up with through the “Tribes” features, where you share like-minded folks content and they share yours. Today, I am trying Tailwind for the first time. I am watching the videos and walking through the tutorials and setting up my first shares through the app. If you would like to try Tailwind for a month, click here. It’s Blog-vember, so this post has to go up today, but I will probably let everyone know what the experience has been after a month of using it by writing a more extended blog post.
Though I am using it for more than just the blog—we are a record company and a music publishing house—if it works for one part of our business, I am hopeful that it will help us with some of the other social media posting we do for the other side of the aisle. Either way, today’s the start of something new with Tailwind. In the meantime, I thought you might benefit from knowing more about this tool, if you are trying increase your reach quickly.
RELATED VIDEOS
Why I Run: https://youtu.be/e_xYoinrJPA
Gab & Jam Ep 7 Rock Star Billboard: https://youtu.be/Fm5i9q5gxaU
Gearfest 2018: https://youtu.be/BieMBgbbMtw
Here is one of our recent Gab and Jam episodes for your viewing pleasure.
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More Ways to stalk B L O O M I N G P R E J I P P I E :
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bloomingprejippie
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/bloomingprejippie
Youtube: https://goo.gl/EzSkVn
Soundcloud (podcast): https://soundcloud.com/bloomingprejippie
Soundcloud (music): https://soundcloud.com/prejippie
